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In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the founding of Lake County this year, Lake County News is publishing a series of historical stories about the county, its people and places. This week's feature is about Upper Lake, written by Bernie Butcher who, along with his wife, Lynne, owns the Tallman Hotel and Blue Wing Saloon.
In August of 2003, my wife Lynne and I purchased and began restoring a derelict old hotel on the Main Street of the small Lake County town of Upper Lake.
The original Tallman Hotel had an interesting part to play in the early development of Lake County but, in researching the history, it is the sidebar connection to the Civil War and to the colonization of Argentina that I found most interesting.
The original Tallman House Hotel was built in the early 1870s by Lake County pioneer Rufus Tallman.
The hotel was part of a full-service facility consisting of hotel, livery stable and saloon designed to serve passengers traveling to Clear Lake and the nearby hot springs resorts.
By the 1880s, Upper Lake had become the terminus of the Cloverdale and Clear Lake stage line, which brought tourists to resorts such as Witter Springs, Saratoga Springs, Bartlett Springs and Le Trianon at Blue Lakes.
The hotel prospered for a while, then entered a period of decline and ceased to be occupied after 1962.
For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released today during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting.
“The movie sent chills down my spine,” said Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "It shows a CME swelling into an enormous wall of plasma and then washing over the tiny blue speck of Earth where we live. I felt very small.”
CMEs are billion-ton clouds of solar plasma launched by the same explosions that spark solar flares. When they sweep past our planet, they can cause auroras, radiation storms, and in extreme cases power outages.
Tracking these clouds and predicting their arrival is an important part of space weather forecasting.
“We have seen CMEs before, but never quite like this,” says Lika Guhathakurta, program scientist for the STEREO mission at NASA headquarters. “STEREO-A has given us a new view of solar storms.”
STEREO-A is one of two spacecraft launched in 2006 to observe solar activity from widely-spaced locations. At the time of the storm, STEREO-A was more than 65 million miles from Earth, giving it the “big picture” view other spacecraft in Earth orbit have been missing.
When CMEs first leave the sun, they are bright and easy to see. Visibility is quickly reduced, however, as the clouds expand into the void.
By the time a typical CME crosses the orbit of Venus, it is a billion times fainter than the surface of the full Moon, and more than a thousand times fainter than the Milky Way.
CMEs that reach Earth are almost as gossamer as vacuum itself and correspondingly transparent.
“Pulling these faint clouds out of the confusion of starlight and interplanetary dust has been an enormous challenge,” said DeForest.
Indeed, it took almost three years for his team to learn how to do it. Footage of the storm released today was recorded back in December 2008, and they have been working on it ever since. Now that the technique has been perfected, it can be applied on a regular basis without such a long delay.
Alysha Reinard of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center explains the benefits for space weather forecasting:
“Until quite recently, spacecraft could see CMEs only when they were still quite close to the sun. By calculating a CME's speed during this brief period, we were able to estimate when it would reach Earth. After the first few hours, however, the CME would leave this field of view and after that we were 'in the dark' about its progress.”
“The ability to track a cloud continuously from the Sun to Earth is a big improvement,” she continues. “In the past, our very best predictions of CME arrival times had uncertainties of plus or minus 4 hours,” she continued. “The kind of movies we’ve seen today could significantly reduce the error bars.”
The movies pinpoint not only the arrival time of the CME, but also its mass. From the brightness of the cloud, researchers can calculate the gas density with impressive precision.
Their results for the December 2008 event agreed with actual in situ measurements at the few percent level. When this technique is applied to future storms, forecasters will be able to estimate its impact with greater confidence.
At the press conference, DeForest pointed out some of the movie’s highlights: When the CME first left the sun, it was cavernous, with walls of magnetism encircling a cloud of low-density gas.
As the CME crossed the Sun-Earth divide, however, its shape changed. The CME “snow-plowed” through the solar wind, scooping up material to form a towering wall of plasma. By the time the CME reached Earth, its forward wall was sagging inward under the weight of accumulated gas.
The kind of magnetic transformations revealed by the movie deeply impressed Guhathakurta. “I have always thought that in heliophysics understanding the magnetic field is equivalent to the ‘dark energy’ problem of astrophysics. Often, we cannot see the magnetic field, yet it orchestrates almost everything. These images from STEREO give us a real sense of what the underlying magnetic field is doing.”
All of the speakers at today’s press event stressed that the images go beyond the understanding of a single event. The inner physics of CMEs have been laid bare for the first time – a development that will profoundly shape theoretical models and computer-generated forecasts of CMEs for many years to come.
“This is what the STEREO mission was launched to do,” concluded Guhathakurta, “and it is terrific to see it live up to that promise."
Dr. Tony Phillips works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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The California Employment Development Department's report for July, released on Friday, showed that
California recorded a 12-percent unemployment rate last month, up from 11.8 percent in June but down from 12.4 percent in July 2010.
Nonfarm payroll jobs in California increased by 4,500 during the month for a total of 116,000 since 2011 began, according to data the agency uses from two separate surveys.
Lake County's unemployment rate was 17.5 percent in July, up from the seasonally adjusted number of 17.3 percent in June, earning it the No. 49 ranking out of 58 counties. The county's July 2010 unemployment rate also was 17.5 percent, according to the Employment Development Department.
The U.S. unemployment rate decreased in July to 9.1 percent, down from 9.2 percent in June, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The bureau noted in a separate Friday report that the Western United States reported the highest regional unemployment rate in July, 10.5 percent, while the Northeast recorded the lowest rate, 8.2 percent.
In California, Marin County had the lowest unemployment for July, at 8.1 percent, while Imperial County had 30.8 percent unemployment, the report showed.
Lake's neighboring counties registered the following unemployment rates and statewide ranks: Colusa, 18.4 percent, No. 55; Glenn, 17.3 percent, No. 48; Yolo, 12.2 percent, No. 24; Mendocino, 11.3 percent, No. 20; Napa, 9.2 percent, No. 5; and Sonoma, 10.3 percent, No. 7.
In Lake County, Clearlake Oaks had the highest unemployment, 25.7 percent, followed by Nice, 25.2 percent; the city of Clearlake, 24.8 percent; Lucerne, 18.4 percent; Kelseyville, 17.8 percent; Middletown, 17.8 percent; city of Lakeport, 16.9 percent; Cobb, 15.7 percent; Lower Lake, 14.7 percent; Hidden Valley Lake, 14.4 percent; north Lakeport, 13.9 percent; and Upper Lake, 9.2 percent.
Lake County had a labor force of 24,980 people in July, with 4,370 of them out of work, according to state records. In June, there were 25,640 people in the county's labor force, with 4,430 unemployed.
The Employment Development Department reported that there were 566,380 people in California receiving regular unemployment insurance benefits during the July survey week, compared with 528,919 last month and 666,502 last year.
The state said new claims for unemployment insurance were 57,897 in July 2011, compared with 74,944 in June and 73,817 in July of last year.
Surveys give different job growth numbers for July
The Employment Development Department said nonfarm jobs in California totaled 14,074,700 in July, an increase of 4,500 jobs over the month. That followed a gain of 30,400 jobs in June, according to a survey of 42,000 California businesses measures jobs in the economy. The year-over-year change – July 2010 to July 2011 – shows an increase of 189,400 jobs, up 1.4 percent.
A federal survey of 5,500 households showed a decrease in the number of employed people. It estimated the number of Californians holding jobs in July was 15,848,000, a decrease of 62,000
from June, and down 53,000 from the employment total in July of last year, the Employment Development Department reported.
The state said that the number of people unemployed in California was 2,167,000 – up by 34,000 over the month, but down by 85,000 compared with July of last year.
The report showed that eight categories – mining and logging; construction; manufacturing; information; professional and business services; educational and health services; leisure and hospitality; and other services – added jobs over the month, gaining 12,600 jobs. Educational and health services posted the largest increase over the month, adding 4,200 jobs.
Three categories – trade, transportation and utilities; financial activities; and government – reported job declines over the month, down 8,100 jobs. Of those groups, government posted the largest decrease over the month, down 5,800 jobs, the state said.
In a year-over-year comparison, from July 2010 to July 2011, nonfarm payroll employment in California increased by 189,400 jobs, up 1.4 percent, according to the report.
Eight categories – mining and logging; construction; manufacturing; trade, transportation and utilities; information; professional and business services; educational and health services; and leisure and hospitality – posted job gains over the year, adding 226,600 jobs, the state said.
The Employment Development Department said professional and business services posted the largest gain on a numerical basis, adding 59,400 jobs, up 2.9 percent, while information posted the largest gain on a percentage basis, up by 7.1 percent, an increase of 30,000 jobs.
Three categories – financial activities; other services; and government – posted job declines over the year, down 37,200 jobs, the Friday report noted. Government posted the largest decline on both a numerical and percentage basis, down by 33,000 jobs, a decrease of 1.4 percent.
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CLEARLAKE OAKS, Calif. – A probation search conducted by the Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force in Clearlake Oaks on Thursday has resulted in one arrest and the seizure of methamphetamine and paraphernalia.
Delana Rae Weathers, 54, who was on formal probation for a previous drug related conviction, was arrested for possession of a controlled substance, possession of controlled substance paraphernalia, resisting or obstructing a peace officer, concealing evidence and violation of probation, according to a Friday report from the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
On Thursday at approximately 4:30 p.m. narcotics detectives and a uniformed sheriff K-9 patrol deputy performed a probation search at Weathers' Venus Village home as she parked in the driveway, the report said.
The drug detection K-9 alerted on the interior of the pickup truck Weathers was driving, according to the report. A quantity of methamphetamine was later recovered concealed beneath Weathers’ clothing.
While searching Weathers’ bedroom, narcotics detectives located more methamphetamine on a dresser and paraphernalia commonly used to smoke controlled substances, such as methamphetamine, inside one of the dresser drawers, the report said.
Weathers was transported to the Lake County Hill Road Correctional Facility and booked, with bail set at $10,000. Jail records indicated she later remained in custody early Saturday.
The Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force can be contacted through its anonymous tip line at 707-263-3663.
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KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – The California Highway Patrol on Friday morning issued a report on the circumstances of a fatal crash that took place late the previous night and claimed the life of two people.
The crash, which involved a pickup, occurred on Merritt Rad west of Smith Lane at 11 p.m. Thursday, according to CHP Officer Kory Reynolds.
While initial radio and CHP reports on Thursday night had indicated three people were dead, Reynolds said that in fact two people had died as a result of the crash.
He said the names of the deceased were not being released pending family notifications.
Reynolds said that 23-year-old Jacobo Mejia was driving the 1999 Ford F-150 pickup eastbound on Merritt Road west of Smith Lane at an unknown speed with five passengers when he allowed the pickup to drift off the north shoulder.
Mejia lost control and turned the truck to the right, traveling across the roadway and exiting the south shoulder, overturning several times, according to Reynolds.
Four passengers in the pickup were not wearing seat belts and were ejected from the vehicle, said Reynolds. Two of the passengers were pronounced dead at the scene.
Reynolds said passenger Abelino Gomez, 28, of Kelseyville, was taken to Sutter Lakeside Hospital by Kelseyville Fire ambulance with major injuries.
The rest of the crash survivors were flown out to area trauma centers by air ambulances which landed at Lampson Field, according to reports from the scene.
Passenger Armondo Gomez, 33, of Kelseyville was flown to Santa Rosa Memorial hospital with moderate injuries, while Reynolds said Mejia and passenger Juan Perez, 22, of Kelseyville were both flown to UC Davis Medical Center with moderate injuries.
Reynolds said Mejia was placed under arrest for felony driving under the influence causing injury and vehicular manslaughter.
CHP Officer Matt Norton is investigating the incident, Reynolds said.
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